Most readers nowadays, asked to name a contemporary Chinese writer, could
manage at least one. But the odds are that it will be a man. In these
interviews, we explore how Chinese women authors from mainland China see
themselves and their status.
In recent decades in mainland China, there have been vast improvements in
standards of living and personal freedoms (to choose one's higher
education and career, and to travel, for instance) and a small number of
women writers have flourished. For instance, the current head of the
China Writers Association, Tie Ning, is a woman. However, women writers
still appear to lag far behind their male counterparts in other respects.
Only nine of forty-three winners of the Mao Dun Literary Prize were women
between 1982 and 2015; as were only twenty-seven of 228 Lu Xun Prize
awards (various categories) between 1995 and 2017. And far fewer women
are translated into English: of 117 novels translated from Chinese
between 2012 and 2018, only thirty-five were by women. Our aim in
translating and publishing these interviews is to bring the opinions of
Chinese women writers on this topic, in all their variety and complexity,
to English-language readers.
Notes: With the exception of Wang Bang, all writers answered in
Chinese. The initials of the translator can be found at the end of each
interview. Some writers chose to remain anonymous. We have published
the response of another writer, Tang Fei, separately. It can be read
in Words Without Borders.
Nicky Harman and Natascha Bruce
Our News, Your News
By Bruce Humes, November 25, '20
They are Fang Fang, author of Wuhan Diary, and Uyghur writer Muyesser Abdul'ehed (pen name Hendan Hiyal), now living overseas in Istanbul.
All 100 listed here.
By Bruce Humes, November 20, '20
"Uyghur Poetry in Translation" live online
November 24, 2020 (12:00-13:15, Eastern Time, US)
Opening remarks: Mark Elliott, Harvard’s Vice Provost of International Affairs
Poets performing: Tahir Hamut and Rena Yashar Aybal
Translators to speak: Dr Gülnar Eziz (Harvard Preceptor in Uyghur and Chaghatay), and Dr. Joshua Freeman (Princeton’s Department of East Asian Studies)
Register here
Watch a literary exploration of the city of Shanghai as part of a very special event, showcasing Comma's city anthology The Book of Shanghai, which features ten contemporary Chinese authors. The two contributing authors Chen Danyan and Wang Zhanhai will share with you what it is like to be a young, female writer in China today, writing about the lives of urban Chinese residents.
A joint event between the Confucius Institute at the University of Manchester and Comma Press.
Short stories are under-represented in translation but they have much to offer. Eric Abrahamsen and Dylan Levi King discuss why readers, and publishers, should dive in.
The awards were announced on 12 November 2020 at the China Shanghai International Children's Bookfair. (For winners in previous years, see Wikipedia)
By Bruce Humes, November 9, '20
Angus Stewart recently interviewed me about translating Chi Zijian's novel that chronicles the tragic twilight of the reindeer-herding, Tungusic-speaking Evenki of northeastern China. The tale has since been translated into several languages, including French, Japanese and Swedish (see comments section for URLs).
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By Bruce Humes, November 7, '20
This workshop aims to explore the shifting definitions of the borderland as a territorial gateway, a geopolitical space, a contact zone, a liminal terrain, and an imaginary portal. To this end, participants will explore the intersection of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and ecological dynamics that inform the cartography of the Chinese borderland, from the Northeast to the Southwest, from Inner Mongolia to Tibet, and from Nanyang to Nanmei.
For workshop speakers/themes, click here.
To register and receive a Zoom link, please click here.
Highlights:
Yanshuo Zhang (University of Michigan): Shen Congwen’s Idealized Ethnic: Borderland, Ethnicity, and the Spiritual Enchantments of a Modern Master
Christopher Peacock (Columbia University): “Unsavory Characters: Forced Bilingualism in the Tibetan Fiction of Tsering Döndrup”
Mark Bender (Ohio State University): “Treading Poetic Borders in Southwest China and Northeast India”
A real-time, online Q & A with Zhang Lijia, author of 'Lotus,' a novel set in Shenzhen in the year 2000.
Tue, Nov 10 · 8:00 PM GMT
"Lotus is a rollicking, sexy novel, but it's not just another fun read. The novel provides so much insight into the underside of China's roaring economy and the immense pressure on young migrants to get rich quick. In Lijia Zhang's tour of the sex industry, you'll find not only sleaze, but soul."
--Barbara Demick, former China bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.
Reports NPR: "... if you want to write fan fiction anywhere in China, you have to do it under an account that's linked to your real name."
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 30, '20
From the press release:
The Newman Prize honors Harold J. and Ruth Newman, whose generous endowment of a chair at the University of Oklahoma enabled the creation of the OU Institute for US-China Issues in 2006. OU is also home to the Chinese Literature Translation Archive, Chinese Literature Today, World Literature Today and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Juror Eric Abrahamsen said of the winner, “Yan’s writing does for the Chinese heartland what John Steinbeck did for the American West, or Thomas Hardy for Southwest England…he remains vitally invested in the ethical responsibility of the author. Though it has been demonstrated to him again and again that his explorations of China’s historical trauma are not welcome, he seems not to take the hint, and persists in laying bare what he sees as the original sins of modern Chinese society…His stubbornness, and the perpetual freshness of his sorrow over historical tragedy, are worthy of respect.”
See below for the full text of the press release.
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Indigenous Cultural Translation is about the process that made it possible to film the 2011 Taiwanese blockbuster Seediq Bale in Seediq, an endangered indigenous language. Seediq Bale celebrates the headhunters who rebelled against or collaborated with the Japanese colonizers at or around a hill station called Musha starting on October 27, 1930, while this book celebrates the grandchildren of headhunters, rebels, and collaborators who translated the Mandarin-language screenplay into Seediq in central Taiwan nearly eighty years later.
Congratulations! 2 out of the 12 longlisted titles are translations from Chinese!
Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong, translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce (Granta Publications, 2019)
White Horse by Yan Ge, translated from Chinese by Nicky Harman (HopeRoad Publishing, 2019)
By Dylan Levi King, October 19, '20
In China in Ten Words, Yu Hua describes stubbing his toe on stacks of Lu Xun books gathering dust in the office of a provincial cultural center and saying to himself, "'That guy's days are over, thank goodness!'" (this is from the translation by Allan H. Barr).
As Yu Hua puts it, Lu Xun went "from being an author to being a catchphrase and then back again." Lu Xun’s legacy was flattened in the long half-century after his death. When state control over literature loosened on both sides of the Straits in the ‘80s, attempts were made to reinflate the flattened Lu Xun, but perhaps the damage was already done.
What changed Yu Hua’s mind was picking up the collected short fiction after a director pitched him on writing a script based on some of Lu Xun’s stories.
It made me think back to those books of his under the table in the cultural center, and it seemed to me now that they had been trying to tell me something. When they tripped me up as I went in and out of my office, they were actually dropping a hint, quietly but insistently signaling the presence of a powerful voice within the dusty tomes.
I always found the veneration of Lu Xun understandable, and I appreciate his contributions to contemporary Chinese literature, but I found it hard to see much vital and pressing in his work. Matt Turner’s translation of Lu Xun’s Weeds was a minor revelation last year.
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Toward the end of every year, when China’s magazines, newspapers, and online portals publish their lists of the best books of the year, we are reminded of the vast gulf between the books that are being read in China and the books being translated from Chinese for readers around the world.....
Thu, 22 October 2020, 19:00 – 20:15 British Summer Time
We'll discuss our (wildly!) different translations of an excerpt from a short story by Shen Dacheng (沈大成) from her 2020 collection entitled Asteroids in the Afternoon (小行星掉在下午), published by Imaginist Press. The excerpt and the translations will be made available prior to the event. It doesn't matter if you don't know a word of Chinese....You can still expect some great online entertainment.
By Nicky Harman, October 13, '20
Most readers nowadays, asked to name a contemporary Chinese writer, could manage at least one. But the odds are that it will be a man. In these interviews, we explore how Chinese women authors from mainland China see themselves and their status.
In recent decades in mainland China, there have been vast improvements in standards of living and personal freedoms (to choose one's higher education and career, and to travel, for instance) and a small number of women writers have flourished. For instance, the current head of the China Writers Association, Tie Ning, is a woman. However, women writers still appear to lag far behind their male counterparts in other respects. Only nine of forty-three winners of the Mao Dun Literary Prize were women between 1982 and 2015; as were only twenty-seven of 228 Lu Xun Prize awards (various categories) between 1995 and 2017. And far fewer women are translated into English: of 117 novels translated from Chinese between 2012 and 2018, only thirty-five were by women. Our aim in translating and publishing these interviews is to bring the opinions of Chinese women writers on this topic, in all their variety and complexity, to English-language readers.
Notes: With the exception of Wang Bang, all writers answered in Chinese. The initials of the translator can be found at the end of each interview. Some writers chose to remain anonymous. We have published the response of another writer, Tang Fei, separately. It can be read in Words Without Borders.
Nicky Harman and Natascha Bruce
More…
Every year the International Youth Library, in Munich, selects outstanding new children's books from around the world for its annual White Ravens catalogue, published in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair (Nov). This year, 200 titles were selected in 36 languages from 56 countries, including EIGHT written in Chinese. The blog also includes a link to a newly created list of the 139 Chinese White Ravens since 1984.
By Bruce Humes, October 1, '20
At the same time that it lays bare the ground that shaped this particular family, “Bestiary” also paints a portrait of Taiwanese identity, poking at the various histories and horrors that built the island and its citizens. A place where “Ma doesn’t measure her life in years but in languages: Tayal and Yilan Creole in the indigo fields where she was born … Japanese during the war, Mandarin in the Nationalist-eaten city. Each language worn outside her body, clasped around her throat like a collar.” From pirates to soldiers and those who came before, the men who claimed Taiwan and the women who sustained it, the country’s evolution is as much a part of the book’s collection of beasts as is the tiger spirit.
2020 has been a whirlwind year, and it would have been a special year to celebrate the Shanghai-born Chinese American writer Eileen Chang, as her name rhymes with “two-zero” in Mandarin. English readers may have heard of her through Ang Lee’s 2007 film adaption of her novella, Lust, Caution, but her life, her body of work, her influence, and her status in Chinese twentieth-century literature, surpass the scandalous nature of the NC17-rated spy thriller set in 1940s Shanghai.
To celebrate her revered literary genius and her acute observation of all walks of life, Asia Society Museum presents a monthlong celebration with a list of recommendations for you to “choose your own adventure.” This literary and cinematic journey will culminate at the end of September, the eve of Chang’s 100th birthday, with a conversation featuring scholars of twentieth-century Chinese literature, history, and culture.
"Paper Republic has grown and changed almost beyond recognition... But one thing has not changed: our enthusiasm for promoting Chinese literature in translation."
By Bruce Humes, September 17, '20
To celebrate its opening in Xi’an, Fangsuo Xi’an Creative Union (西安方所创联中心) will host a month or so of cultural forums/salons during mid-September to mid-October.
Poets Aku Wuwu (阿库乌雾) and Xichuan (西川) will appear together Sunday Sep 19 at 15:00-15:30, and Aku Wuwu will recite his long poem 《火颂》in the Yi language. Renowned Shaanxi novelist Jia Pingwa (贾平凹) is scheduled for some time during 16:00-18:00, if I interpret the poster correctly . . .
Venue: 西安市 莲湖区 星火路 22 号 老城根
G-Park 商业街区 1-F 68 商铺
For more on all the events during Sep-Oct info in Chinese visit here.
If that link downloads too slowly, you can try this one, but both are slow due to heavy load of graphics.
10 translated novels have been long-listed for the 2020 French-language Prix de littérature Émile Guimet. They include 3 by China-based authors :
Tempête rouge by Tsering Dondrup (from the Tibetan, translated by Françoise Robin)
Funérailles molles by Fang Fang (from the Chinese, translated by Brigitte Duzan)
Un parfum de corruption by Liu Zhenyun (from the Chinese, translated by Geneviève Imbot-Bichet)
The metaphor (from the French “Le mariage est comme une forteresse assiégée; ceux qui sont dehors veulent y entrer, et ceux qui sont dedans veulent en sortir“) functions on many levels. In Qian’s satire, Fang finds disillusionment and disappointment in wartime Shanghai (full of frauds, phonies, and toadies), the relatively safe interior (where an innkeeper attempts to convince him and his traveling companions that maggots on their dinner are merely “meat sprouts”), the security of an academic career (Sanlü University proves to be a hotbed of petty intrigues), and the prestige of an international education. The image of a fortress under siege also applies to China itself: Fang and his compatriots return to Shanghai just in time to catch the Japanese invasion, and although Qian was much too subtle a writer to foreground the war and occupation – Fang leaves Shanghai to escape a broken heart, not the Japanese – they are a constant presence throughout the novel.
By Helen Wang, September 14, '20
A Century of Chinese Literature in Translation (1919–2019) English Publication and Reception
by Leah Gerber and Qi Lintao, published by Routledge, Sept 2020. ISBN 9780367321291
"Contributors from all around the world approach this theme from various angles, providing an overview of translation phenomena at key historical moments, identifying the trends of translation and publication, uncovering the translation history of important works, elucidating the relationship between translators and other agents, articulating the interaction between texts and readers and disclosing the nature of literary migration from Chinese into English."
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